Optimizing VF by varying growing conditions

Added on 24 September 2024

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Optimizing VF by varying growing conditions

Photo by Petr Magera on Unsplash

How can we provide healthy, vitamin-rich food to growing urban populations? One solution is to cultivate crops indoors, in stacked layers of growing platforms. Such vertical farms offer several advantages over traditional farming, but currently need a lot of energy to create light, air flow, and other conditions for growing crops.

Kaiser et al. advocate for a shift in how these conditions are maintained. Instead of keeping them constant, as is the current practice, their Frontiers in Science lead article argues for “dynamic environmental control”—where different factors are continuously adjusted according to real-time plant needs and external considerations such as electricity prices.